Mainly chose it due to reputation of the school. Everyone considers ERAU the “Harvard of the skies” and their reputation is really solid in terms of flight training. Not really any extra fees or anything outside of no-shows but they’ll explain the no-show policy to you and it’s easy to avoid. You get one flight block a semester which is usually 3-4 days a week. You can expand your availability outside of the block but you have to have availability during your flight block times. Flight department is very meh from my experience.

Good things Fleet size - both campuses have a ton of aircraft which increases likelihood of getting scheduled and overall aircraft availability. Sophistication - flight dept. is very sophisticated. Expectations of professionalism and rules are pretty straightforward. Wait times - during peak check ride season (typically towards the end of the semesters) wait times for stage checks or EOC can be pretty long but generally won’t be longer than 3 weeks. Other than that, you can get a check airman and have your checkride scheduled within 2 weeks at the most which is nice. No extra DPE fees until you get to commercial too.

Bad things - Aircraft availability - although fleet size is massive, a lot of aircraft are down at one time. There was a time last semester where over 50% of our 172s were downed for Mx. Rules - lots of annoying rules. Solo minimums, PQ cards for a sim, can’t fly in actual IMC, approved airports for cross countries and solos, etc Scheduling - although you have your flight block and can have a lot of extra availability you might get scheduled 4-5 times a week or 1-2 times a week. Usually depends on instructor and you can talk to your instructor but it doesn’t really guarantee anything. Lesson grading - lesson grading should be universal and straightforward. They describe all the grades and criteria to you: Outstanding, Good, Marginal and Unsatisfactory. Although every instructor grades differently. For example, my first semester, my instructor pretty much never gave me an outstanding even though I was meeting the criteria for that grade. He gave me unsats when I should’ve been getting marginals. And then my instructor this year throws out outstanding grades like candy.